JIM INGRAHAM: Browns, Lions stand alone in NFL futility

Remember that scene at the beginning of "Animal House" when Larry Kroger and Kent Dorfman ("a wimp and a blimp") arrive at Omega House for a party, and are immediately ushered and sequestered into a side room filled with other losers (Mohammat, Jugdish, Sidney, and Clayton)?

Water seeking its own level, as it were.

Well that's where we are now in the National Football League. Think of the Super Bowl as the NFL's Omega House party.

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Those two frumpy, forlorn figures sitting on the couch in the dreaded side room?

The Browns and the Lions. All alone.

Hello, losers

Enjoy the punch and cookies.

In the long, pretentious, over-commercialized Roman Numeral-cluttered history of the Super Bowl, which dates back to the Lyndon Johnson administration, only two old-guard franchises have never made it to the big party.

The Browns and the Lions.

This year's Super Bowl between the Colts and Saints will be the XLIVth (44th) Super Bowl in Super Bowl history. During those 44 (XLIV) years EVERY team that has been in the league more than 15 years has made it to the Super Bowl at least once -- except for the Browns and the Lions.

This, of course, is nearly impossible. The NFL is a league specifically designed to turn bad teams into good ones overnight. It does so by giving the worst teams the highest picks in the draft and the easiest schedules.

In order to eventually become a good team, basically all a franchise has to do is just keep showing up, and sooner or later it will happen.

I mean, come on, the SAINTS are in the Super Bowl!

In 1996, the Carolina Panthers, in just their second year of existence, went 13-5 and made it to the NFC Championship Game. In 2003, the Panthers, who still hadn't even been in the league 10 years, went 14-6 and made it to the Super Bowl.

In other words, rank beginners have started totally from scratch and made it to the Super Bowl before the Browns and the Lions.

The Buffalo Bills, who over the last five years have a record of 32-48, and whose head coach at the end of last season was Perry Fewell, have LOST more Super Bowls than the Browns and Lions have played in (4-0).

And it's not like the Browns and Lions have been held back by their inability to find a superstar quarterback to take them there.

The Cowboys have been to the Super Bowl eight times, the Steelers seven times. The Browns none, the Lions none.

Stability? What's that? In the Super Bowl era the Lions have had 15 different head coaches. The Browns have had 14.

The Cowboys have had seven. The Steelers have had four.

You don't think that has anything to do with it, do you?

Ironically, in the pre-Super Bowl era, the Browns and the Lions were perennial powerhouses. The Browns played in the championship game 10 years in a row (1946-55) and 11 out of 12 years (1946-57). In five of those years, all of them in the 1950s, the Browns and Lions played each other in the NFL championship game.

But that was then.

And this is now.

And the dreaded sideroom is empty, except for the Browns and the Lions.

More punch, fellas?

Woe is them.

On Nov. 22 of this past NFL season, the woe hit the fan. It was the 1-9 Browns vs. the 1-8 Lions. It was a shame either team had to win -- but the Lions did, 38-37, scoring the winning points AFTER the game was over (don't ask).

The Browns finished the season with a record of 5-11. The Lions 2-14. The Browns only beat one team with a winning record. The Lions didn't beat anyone with a winning record.

And so, after 44 consecutive years of not making it to the Super Bowl, the Browns and Lions today seem farther away than ever. Even a change of centuries hasn't helped.

Both teams have drafted brutally through the years. They've changed coaches and front offices constantly. Made one bad decision after another, threw bad money after bad money, rarely had a plan, much less stuck to it. They've basically careened rudderless through the decades since Super Bowl I (One), with no direction home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.

When a team goes 44 years without making it to The Big Dance, that is institutional ineptitude of epic, historic, pathetic proportions.